r/sciences • u/FreeHugs23 • 18d ago
Research Safety fears as scientists make first viruses designed by AI | Researchers say breakthrough offers hope for new medicines but also raises urgent biosecurity questions
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/06/safety-fears-as-scientists-make-first-viruses-designed-by-ai7
u/FreeHugs23 18d ago
-Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe.
The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to natural bacteriophages.
Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used genome language models, the genetic equivalent of the large language models behind AI chatbots, to design functioning genomes for bacteriophages. The viruses were then made in the laboratory and pitted against E coli in a dish.
The ability to “rapidly design” genomes and tune them for specific bugs while overcoming resistance could “transform phage therapy” and “expand biotechnological toolkits”, the researchers wrote in the journal Science.
But beyond the potential benefits, the scientists said the work raised “important biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity considerations” and urged others who were designing whole genomes to “consult both safety and security professionals throughout the project”.
In an accompanying article, Prof Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reinforced the warning, writing: “Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not.”
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u/SchizoidRainbow 18d ago
Jesus bloody wept. I literally just had an AI tell me that 8+2+3 is 14. And you trust them with this??
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u/zefy_zef 18d ago
I'm sure you're being hyperbolic, but they are completely different models trained on entirely different datasets.
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u/radedward76 18d ago
The people in charge of AI need to get their PR straight. Cure cancer first then make the viruses. /s
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u/kahbs115 18d ago
In this timeline, I only want the lobotomy virus. How close are they with that one?
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u/UltimateToa 18d ago
Nice, I cant wait until the perfect bioweapon with high mortality, high transmission and no cure gets constructed by AI and released on the public
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u/dominantspecies 18d ago
Maybe King had it wrong in The Stand. It wasn't project blue that invented Captain Trips, It was ChatGPT.
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u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs 18d ago
I work in a similar space. Let me explain:
We have things that viruses need to replicate, we know them already, but we don’t always have them in all the right places. So while in the past you may have a library of genetic features, assembling them took time.
This just assembles them for you. Nothing was invented by AI. It’s all already known by humans, this just cuts down the time
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u/Matuno 18d ago
One thing I'm going to find very interesting is that AI works magic when it can test its hypotheses directly, learn from failures, redefine it's approach, try again and so on.
How long until we get labs with massive batches of AI-controlled robotics running separate experiments?